


How Was That Sentence Going To End?

by TheSigyn



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-21
Updated: 2011-03-21
Packaged: 2018-04-14 19:12:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4576395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSigyn/pseuds/TheSigyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Standing on the beach, hand in hand, a lifetime ahead of you. Happily ever after at last, right? Right?</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Was That Sentence Going To End?

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Restricted Work] by [Andall](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andall/pseuds/Andall). Log in to view. 



  
  
This beach — this weak point in the world. It was so hard to find. And now here I am, standing on the wrong side of the void. Is this how you felt, Rose, as I burned up a star to tell you goodbye? Did you feel the same emptiness I feel as I watch my other self dematerialize in my TARDIS with my Donna and my second heart?  
  
As if the future had ended.  
  
No doubt he feels he got the worser part of the deal. Because there was a time I would have willingly sliced out one heart to find myself here, on this beach, with you. No doubt he feels it poetic. That he gave you a gift. That he gave me a life that he’d always wanted.   
  
Except...   
  
He’s not the one standing facing it now. I am. And if he were me he too would know the truth. This is a life I wanted only in the abstract. I had every opportunity. There was never any pressing need to flee back to the TARDIS at the first lull. I never offered to come down to Earth, rent a little flat, get a job, become your lover. I could have done that. No one ever said I couldn’t.   
  
Except me.   
  
Your hand is warm in mine. And you’re crying... because I’m not him. You kissed me. You touched the space above my single heart. You made me say what a Time Lord cannot honestly say, spout out a word that means nothing in itself. But I’m human now. So the human word is mine. “Love.”   
  
It has cheapened the emotion. You are no longer complete — Rose Tyler and all that it implies. You are simply... a word.  
  
I’ve got you now. We have a lifetime ahead of us. And all I can think is that in the end, he got to keep you, too. By asking if it needed saying. Because it didn’t. Not before. But now I’m human, and now it does.  
  
I need to think. I haven’t had time for that. And this brain, these thoughts, seem muddled. Slow. Don’t let me go mad.  
  
Think. I’ve been human before. I’ve been diminished before, only a portion of who I was supposed to be. John Smith loved Joan Redford. The word meant something to him.  
  
I love you.  
  
I think I hate those words.  
  
Human. I am human. I adored humans. I wanted to BE human. But now it feels wrong. Now my memory is fixed. As the flux of time ebbs and flows like the waters on this beach, there will be no knowledge of what should be versus what is. If history is altered, I will not see the change in the timeline of my memory. Because I am no longer a Time Lord. I do not feel the breath of the time winds blowing past me. I will not feel psychic imprints all around me. I do not feel the thinness of the walls of the universe on this beach — and I know I should. My memory is intact, if muddy and confused. My mind is strong enough to maintain it. But all my gifts left with my heart. Or maybe Donna got them. I don’t know.   
  
Oh, I’ll miss Donna. Maybe even more than I missed...   
  
But you’re crying. Where are you, let me find you. Find at least your body beneath this blue jacket, the salt wind beating against our skin.  
  
Twined around each other, your heart beats against mine, syncopated at first. But as we stand together they settle... blend. Two hearts.   
  
This is the first moment I’ve felt whole.  
  
Maybe I can do this. This isn’t what I wanted. But you saved me once before. Your arrogance and your clarity, your optimism. They dragged me from the dark. If I let you, can you do it again? Your single self-centered vision turned me into what you saw me as — a hero, a strength, a force for good. You were so blind you could not see the murderer, the sociopath, the destroyer of worlds. You cut them out of the picture. And I let you, because I didn’t want it. Can you see me as happy? Will you cut out of the picture everything that I have lost, how I am diminished? Will I again become what you want me to be?  
  
Oh, I need you, now. I’m trapped again, lost again, banished again. Sentenced to a single lifetime on Earth without my TARDIS to escape. My mind tattered and torn. A prison the size of a planet. I had UNIT before. I’ll have Torchwood now. I’ll have you. Hold me tightly, keep me from screaming in horror at what I have become.  
  
And I can tell you none of this. All this loss, all this horror, all this misery must be kept from you. Because I can already see that you love this body. This lifetime you can see before you. This prison sentence. You are sad for him, but for yourself, this is all you’ve ever wanted. And for yourself, yourself is all that has ever mattered, in the end. Your beautiful self-centeredness. I thought I loved you for it. I couldn’t say it then. I can’t say what I want to now. There was only one word I couldn’t say before. Now I’ll be choking on a lifetime of them.  
  
Rose Tyler....  
  
How was that sentence going to end?  



End file.
